While defending what many skeptics consider his indefensible decision to meet with a Russian lawyer a bit more than a year ago, Donald Trump Jr. offered this interesting thought – it was a different time. “There was no Russia fever back then. That was at the beginning of the campaign, more or less. There was no Russia fever," he told Fox this week.

For months now, I have marveled at the enduring oddness of the Russian kerfuffle. I’ve scratched my head over candidate-then-President Trump’s unconventional cordiality toward the Kremlin, the weird alleged ties between the Moscow crowd and so many members of Team Trump, and the administration’s insistence that any story about any of this is inherently “fake news.”

So you can imagine how relieved I am to consider the possibility that none of it is real, but rather a vast, illness-induced hallucination spurred by a raging outbreak of Russia fever. Now, I will grant that I have never before heard of this particular malady, but what do I know? Not too many decades ago, I had not heard of West Nile Virus, Zika or Lana Del Rey.

Of course, it must be quite the epidemic to have swept DC this way. Frankly, I can’t think of anyone who has not been affected. I need only raise my blinds to see Democrats raging in the streets, Republicans scrambling down alleys, and White House staffers…well, come to think of it, I don’t get to see them much at all since they rarely do briefings on-camera any more. I guess the outbreak must be particularly bad over there.

But alas, even as I consider the relative comfort of this whole notion, I fear I must set it aside. Because I know the truth. While nothing illegal has been proven against the president’s team, enough legitimate questions have been raised to warrant a vigorous investigation. There is nothing fake about the need for that. Our intelligence services are convinced the Russians tried to meddle in the last election, and it is only right that voters know if anyone here was helping them.